Yesterday morning I woke up in my town of Roslindale shortly after six in the morning. I had promised to be at the Eastern Service Workers Association office in Dorchester by seven o'clock. Roslindale and Dorchester are both neighborhoods in Boston. The call came on Thursday night at home. I was watching "Slum Dog Millionaire" (for the first time, --I prefer to watch a movie after it is first released so all the spin and buzz will not pollute my perceptions) with my wife and my mother, who was visiting. The full-time volunteers were reluctant to ask me to go down to the Chelsea (another Boston neighborhood) produce market to pick up donations for our weekly fruit and vegetable distribution, because I had developed a little heart failure earlier this year. But they were desperate. I was something like the fiftieth volunteer with a car they called. (Actually, Jinpa Kangri means "volunteer with a car" in Tibetan, --kidding!) ESWA was down to one car and they needed it for several other tactics on Friday. The full-time volunteer who called me was overjoyed when I said 'yes,' insisting that I do none of the heavy lifting.
The Eastern Service Workers Association is a new kind of labor drive. It is a community-based self-help membership organization whose goal is to attack poverty at its root. That is why it is self-help. That is why it is not charity. "Not-for-profit" charities do important work but you notice whenever their energies begin to get to the point of changing the way things are they somehow lose their government funding. ESWA takes no money from the government so the government has no 'say so' how close or far it gets from changing the status quo.
There are no salaried positions in the association. It is all-volunteer. The full-time volunteers' housing and other living expenses are donated by community supporters and all the meals served in the office are provided by members. Members get an eleven point benefits package from the moment she or he signs an authorization during one of ESWA's bi-weekly neighborhood canvasses. That is the membership/benefits part. All the benefits are designed to put back into the family budget the funds that bad government policy and outrageously low wages are allowing to be drained away. Besides weekly fruits and vegetables (remember the fruits and vegetables? this is a posting about fruit and vegetables) there are clothing distributions across the city at regular intervals, including an upcoming back-to-school distribution of school uniforms, back-packs and other supplies; Preventive medical and dental objectives carried out by volunteer doctors and dentists; "Know-your-law" sessions carried out by volunteer attorneys; An eye-care benefit that includes getting glasses from optometrists donating their resources; etc... etc... The logic of it is that it is well nigh impossible to organize against the forces that are keeping you down if you are struggling twenty-four seven to keep the lights turned on and food on the table for your family. I do not know about the gentle reader, but I find that logic hard to fault.
E.S.W.A. finds volunteers at 'literature tables' in front of universities and coffee shops, supermarkets and health-food stores. I was found by Eastern Service Workers in front of a supermarket (Roche Brothers) in a neighborhood near me (West Roxbury, the most affluent part of Boston). Two weeks later I got the 'phone call I had been waiting for my entire adult life. It was from a member who after receiving some of the ESWA. benefits had shown a willingness to come down to the office and help out. She was checking down from a script that she had practiced but was reading out-loud. I did not mind. I was just hoping and praying she was not going to hit me up for a monetary donation because I was out of work. The member did not disappoint. She asked me if I would like to come down to the office, get a tour, and see if I wanted to go out to the neighborhoods canvassing for new members.
And that is pretty much how the Eastern Service Workers Association's system works. I have gone canvassing, worked on literature tables, worked on the newspaper, "The Boston Worker," advocated for members on preventive dental visits; delivered turkey baskets to members during the holidays; represented Roslindale and neighboring Mattapan at Boston Workers Benefit Council; spoken at hearings on energy company's rate increase requests and state required health insurance legislation change requests; told my ESWA story ay speaking engagements at area colleges; had the honor of being appointed to the ESWA Advisory Committee; and as you know picked up fruits and vegetables for the Friday morning distribution.
The Chelsea Produce Market is nothing like the tables and tents of Haymarket farmer's market in Government Center. These are a series of ware-houses, in neighboring Everett, MA, taking up around a square mile (roughly the size of Charlestown, another Boston neighborhood). It consists of aisles of loading docks and a free-for-all of semi-tractor trailers distributing fruits and vegetables all over greater Boston from up and down the Eastern Seaboard and across the country. The fun part is after the managers say they are 'light' today, going directly to the workers who always have something set aside for us. We filled up my car till it was bulging at the seems. The distribution at a Roxbury (another Boston neighborhood: the poorest neighborhood per capita in New England) community center, run by members and volunteers under the auspices of the Boston Workers Benefit Council, came off like clockwork. And my ticker did not do so badly, either.
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